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Over 50 join first swim meet
More than 50 swimmers from host Saipan Swim Club and Tsunami Saipan participated in the SSC Double Distance Meet last Saturday at the Kan Pacific Swimming Pool.
The weekend event was the first meet of the delayed 2015-2016 season and the good turnout proved how the island’s swimmers were excited to plunge into the pool again after a long break due to Typhoon Soudelor.
The season-opener event kicked off with the 400m freestyle race, which featured two teams from SSC. The first team was composed of the club’s senior swimmers Kento Akimaru, Lennosuke Suzuki, Salofi Welch, and Christian Villacrusis. The second quartet had Jinnosuke Suzuki, Taiga Sato, David Boyer, and Caleb Wang. Results of the relay along with the individual races have yet to be released at press time. Times in the weekend tournament will be considered in the CNMI record books.
After the 400m freestyle relay, organizers had the 200m freestyle relay, which was divided into two heats. Heat 1 had five teams with SSC fielding two squads and Tsunami Saipan entering three. Heat 2 was dominated by Tsunami Saipan as it had five teams, while SSC had only the foursome of Wataru Kadokura, Mark Chavez, Dino Sato, and Robert De Courteny.
Up next for the first meet of the season was the longest race of the event—the 800m freestyle—with only eight swimmers entered in the competition. Caleb Wang was among them and was joined on Heat 2 by Villacrusis, Akimaru, Taiga Sato, and Welch. Akimaru had the fastest seed time on Heat 2 with his 10:39.69, while Lennosuke Suzuki, Boyer, and R.J. Pierce raced on Heat 1.
There were also two heats in the 400m freestyle, while the 200m freestyle featured three heats and only SSC swimmers raced in both events, as Tsunami Saipan bets opted to participated in the last event of the day—the 100m freestyle. The final event had eight heats.
